Micron has unveiled its newest 5100 series enterprise SSDs that will feature a SATA interface and be based on 3D TLC NAND, aiming at servers and data centers.

The new Micron 5100 series enterprise SDDs will be available in capacities ranging from 240GB to 8TB as well as in three different versions, depending on both performance and endurance. The entire lineup uses Micron's 384Gb 32-layer 3D TLC NAND, Marvell's 88SS1074 controller and a SATA 6Gbps interface.

The lineup starts with the 5100 ECO series that will be available in 2.5-inch 7mm form-factor and 480GB, 960GB, 1920GB, 3840GB and 7680GB capacities as well as single-sided M.2 2280 form-factor in 480GB, 960GB and 1920GB capacities. The sequential read and write performance peaks at 540MB/s and 380 to 520MB/s while the 4K random read and write performance hits 93K and 9K to 31K IOPS. It has an endurance rating of 0.45 to 8.4PB, depending on the capacity.

The Micron 5100 PRO series is a bit more performance oriented and will also be available in a 2.5-inch 7mm form-factor but in 240GB, 480GB, 960GB, 1920GB and 3840GB capacities as well as a single-sided M.2 2280 form-factor in 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and 1920GB capacities. The sequential read and write performance peaks at 540MB/s and 250 to 520MB/s, while random 4K read and write hits 78K to 93K IOPS and 26K to 43K IOPS, depending on the capacity.

The Micron 5100 PRO series also has a higher endurance rating of 0.65 to 17.6PB.

The "high-end" 5100 MAX SSD series is only available in 2.5-inch form-factor and comes in 240GB, 480GB, 960GB and 1920GB capacities, has a sequential read and write performance of up to 540MB/s and 310 to 520MB/s, with random 4K read and write peaking at 93K and 48K to 74K IOPS. It also has the highest endurance rating of 2.2 to 17.6PB rating.

The entire lineup also has optional TCG Enterprise and FIPS 140-2 validation encryption as well as Flex Capacity, full power-loss protection and more.

Unfortunately, Micron did not unveil details about the price but did note that 2.5-inch form-factor 5100 series models with capacities of up to 2TB as well as M.2 form-factor in capacities of up to 960GB are already in production while other should be coming at a later date.

While it has already announced a 4TB 850 EVO SSD back in July, Samsung is planning to introduce a 4TB version of its 850 Pro SSD at the CES 2017 show in Las Vegas.

If you thought that US $1,499 priced 4TB 850 EVO SSD was cool, you will be impressed to know that Samsung plans to introduce a 4TB version of its flagship 2.5-inch SATA 850 Pro SSD at CES 2017 show in Las Vegas which kicks off on January 5th.

This will also be the first 4TB MLC (2-bits per cell) SSD on the market, which will bring both better performance and more reliability.

Unfortunately, Samsung did not provide any details regarding the actual performance or the price of the new 4TB 850 Pro SSD, but we suspect it will be similar to the 2TB version, featuring MEX controller and sequential transfer speed of up to 550MB/s for read and up to 520MB/s for write with 4K random performance of up to 100,000 and 90,000 IOPS.

A new report has warned that Spotify could be borking the lifespan of your SSD.

For some reason Spotify’s music streaming app writes shedloads of data to users’ machines, potentially putting some storage systems at risk.

Some Spotify users were experiencing hundreds of gigabytes of data being written in an hour, with some reported write amounts rising to 1TB or more. This happens when Spotify is idle, and not storing songs locally.

Because SSDs have a limited amount of write capacity, this sort of bug can really stuff them up. A budget SSD could be chewed up and spat out in a month.

What the software appears to be doing is re-writing your playlist database. So if you have a big database this is going to murder the SSD.

According to Reddit, people with especially large databases are seeing Spotify write 10GB every 40 seconds, which according to Samsung, would wear out the drive in just four days.”

Spotify told TrustedReviews that the bug has been fixed in version 1.0.42 which is currently rolling out to all users.

While no precise performance details were given, we expect a minor update since the 610P SSD series will co-exist with the currently available 600P SSD series.

In addition to the 610P SSD series, the same slide shows that Intel plans to introduce a BGA version of the 600P series which will be available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities and use the BGA M.2 1620 form-factor.

The new Intel 600P SSD series is expected in Q4 2017 while 600P series BGA will come a few months before that.

ADATA has launched a new M.2 2280 SATA 6Gbps interface version of its Ultimate SU800 3D NAND SSD that will be available in capacities of up to 1TB and offer good performance at attractive price points.

Based on TLC 3D NAND and powered by an SMI controller, the Ultimate SU800 M.2 2280 SSD will offer a sequential performance of up to 560MB/s for read and up to 520MB/s for write. As noted, the Ultimate SU800 SSD uses a 22x80x3.5mm M.2 2280 form-factor and a SATA 6Gbps interface.

It will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities, feature LDPC ECC (error correcting code), SLC Caching algorithm with DRAM Cache Buffer and a high TBW with MTBF of 2 million hours.

Unfortunately, ADATA did not reveal any details regarding the price of the M.2 2280 SATA 6Gbps version of the Ultimate SU800 SSD but we suspect it should not be too far from the 2.5-inch version, priced at around €130 for the 512GB version in Europe.

Western Digital has formally entered the Solid State Drive (SSD) market today with two offerings in the WD Blue and WD Green product lines. The SSDs will broaden the company’s portfolio of existing hard drives for PCs and workstations. Consumers stand to benefit from the combination of reliable storage, 1.75M hours MTTF, reduced power overhead and less heat when compared to HDDs.

WD Blue SSDs by design are optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications. At launch they will be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors. Being a performance drive, the WD Blue SSD is expected to offer up to 545MB/s and 525MB/s sequential read and write speeds, and endurance of up to 400 TBW. Western Digital has told us that the suggested retail price will start from $79 for the 250GB model to for the $299 for the 1TB model.

WD Green SSDs are set to deliver essential-class performance and be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors. The WD Green lineup of SSD drives are designed to have a sequential read and write times of up to 540MB/s and 405MB/s and endurance up to 80TBW. The drives have an expected launch date of later this quarter.

Both drive offerings will include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, as well as are protected by a three year limited warranty.

ADATA has announced its XPG series SX8000 SSD, which will be based on the Silicon Motion controller, 3D MLC NAND and use the standard 2280 M.2 form-factor with PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe interface.

ADATA has decided to use Silicon Motion's SM2260 controller but there are still few details on which manufacturer is behind the 3D MLC NAND used on the new XPG SX8000 M.2 SSD. The ADATA XPG SX8000 SSD series will be available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities.

The combination of the SM2260 controller and 3D MLC NAND were enough for XPG SX8000 SSD to hit sequential performance peaking at 2400MB/s for read and 1000MB/s for write on the 512GB and 1TB versions, 2000MB/s and 600MB/s on the 256GB version and 1000MB/s for read and 300MB/s for write on the lowest capacity 128GB version. The same thing then with the random 4K performance, reaching 100K IOPS for read and 140K IOPS for write on the 512GB and 1TB versions, 80K IOPS and 130K IOPS on the 256GB version and 45K IOPS and 75K IOPS on the 128GB version.

Showed off during the Flash Memory Summit in August last year, the Silicon Motion SM2260 controller seems pretty good on paper and its previous SM2246EN controller has been used on plenty of SSDs, from Corsair, Crucial, Mushkin, Sandisk and other makers but the new SM2260 has still to prove its worth. The new SM2260 controller packs two ARM Cortex cores, has eight NAND flash channels and supports 256-bit AES encryption. The ADATA XPG SX8000 SSD also comes with SLC Caching, DRAM Cache Buffer and LDPC ECC technologies

As far as we know, ADATA's XPG SX8000 SSD series is one of the first SSDs to use the brand spanking new Silicon Motion controller so we will wait to see a couple of reviews before we deliver our verdict.

The ADATA XPG SX8000 SSD series is backed by a five year warranty and has an MTBF of two million hours.

Unfortunately, ADATA did not reveal any details regarding the price or the availability date and we could not find it listed anywhere so hopefully these will come to retail/e-tail soon.

Toshiba has announced its new OCZ TL100 SSD series that will be using both a Toshiba controller as well as Toshiba TLC NAND.

The Toshiba OCZ TL100 series SSD will be available in 120GB and 240GB and are the direct successors of the earlier available OCZ TR150 drives. Offering sequential transfer speed of up to 550MB/s for read and up to 530MB/s for write, with random 4K performance of up to 85,000 IOPS for read and 80,000 IOPS for write.

Aimed at those looking for an affordable performance upgrade to a standard HDD, the Toshiba TL100 SSD series will be based on a standard 2.5-inch 7mm-thick form-factor with SATA 6Gbps interface and offer endurance rating of 30TB TBW (27GB/day) for the 120GB version and 60TB TBW (54GB/day) for the 240GB version.

While these might not offer the endurance of a more expensive MLC SSDs, the Toshiba OCZ TL100 SSD series is still backed by a 3-year warranty and should be available soon with a price of around €45 for the 120GB and €65 for the 240GB version.

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) has announced its newest OCZ VX500 SATA SSD series, which will be based on a Toshiba controller, 15nm MLC NAND and promises great price/GB with MLC-performance.

Available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities, the Toshiba OCZ VX500 SSD series is based on the TC358790 controller, its 15nm MLC NAND and comes in a standard 2.5-inch form-factor with SATA 6Gbps interface.

What makes the OCZ VX500 SSD interesting is the promise that it will deliver the performance of a standard MLC-based SSD at a similar price range to TLC NAND based SSDs.

According to Toshiba, the OCZ VX500 SSD lineup hits sequential read performance of up to 550MB/S while sequential write performance depends on the model, reaching 485MB/s for the 128GB version, 510MB/s for the 256GB version and 515MB/s for the 512GB and 1TB versions. The random 4K performance peaks at 90,000 IOPS for read and 65,000 IOPS for write.

The Toshiba OCZ VX500 SSD series lineup is backed by a 5-year warranty, with an endurance rating of 74 to 592 TBW, depending on the capacity, and comes bundled with Acronis TrueImage cloning software.

According to some reports, the new Toshiba should appear in retail pretty soon priced at around US $65/€65 for the 128GB, US $95/€95 for the 256GB, US $150/€150 for the 512GB and US $340/€340 for the 1TB version.

Intel is refreshing its consumer, data centre and IoT SSDs with six SSDs with its new IMFT 3D NAND under the bonnet.

Intel chose to skip the 16nm investment, instead relying on the IMFT 3D NAND and this took a lot longer to develop. For a while not this forced it to lean on SK Hynix 16nm NAND for many of its newest products.

According to Tom's Hardware the IMFT 3D NAND in Intel's new SSDs come from the IMFT fabs should be cheap enough to kick Samsung in the bottom line.

The first SSD is the 600p. It has four capacities that span from 128 to 1,024 GB in a single-sided M.2 form factor. The SSDs feature have a 3D TLC NAND working with a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe connection. The small SSDs provide up to 1,800/560 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput and 155,000/128,000 random read/write IOPS.

The 600p supports AES 256 encryption. The 600p will go into the value market with a $359 price tag for a 1TB model.

For the business market there is the 6000p and it has features such as remote secure erase capabilities. It comes in the single-sided M.2 form factor and features sequential transfer speeds up to1,800/560 MBps read/write, and up to 155,000/128,000 random read/write IOPS.

The E 6000p series features sequential transfer speeds up to 1,570/540 MBps read/write IOPS and up to 71,000/112,000 random read/write IOPS with the 256 GB capacity. The smaller 128 GB model has a lower performance level.

The SSD has a rare NVMe interface and will be useful for advanced IoT set ups.

For the datacentre, the P3520 targets the value market. The DC P3520S comes in capacities of up to 2 TB and has up to 375,000/20,000 random read/write IOPS and 1,700/1,350 MBps of sequential read/write throughput. The DC P3520 uses the same architectural platform the DC P3X00 series predecessors. The difference is that Chipzilla changed the NAND from 20nm IMFT to 3D MLC. It has a low price point of $294 for 450 GB and $948 for 1.2 TB.

The DC S3520 is designed for the for the read-centric SATA segment of the data centre. It comes in 2.5" and M.2 form factors. Intel claims it will last for 230 years if you only do a single drive write a day as it is, it has a five-year warranty. It can manage 67,500/17,000 read/write IOPS and 450/380 MBps of sequential read/write throughput for the 2.5" variants.

The E 5420S is another product targeted at the embedded market, but it comes in both 2.5" and M.2 form factors.